Newgate

The old copper mine in what is now Granby,
part of the ancient town of Simsbury, used for
about half a century as a state prison, and
named from the more noted debtors' prison in London
Newgate, was long famous in the annals of Connecticut.

It is situated on the western slope of that greenstone
mountain range which traverses the whole breadth of
New England, and separates the Farmington from
the Connecticut River Valley. How early copper
was discovered here is not known, but it is mentioned
in the proceedings of a town meeting of Simsbury in
1705, when a committee was appointed to make explorations,
and report to the town. Two years later
a contract was made with three persons, named Woodbridge,
for working the mine and smelting the ore,
with the stipulation that one-tenth of the product
should belong to the town. It is a curious fact, as indicating
what class of persons in that day were supposed
to have sufficient knowledge to carry on such a
work, that the three contractors were all clergymen;
also, that, of the portion that was to come to the
town, two-thirds should be applied for the maintenance
of an able schoolmaster in Simsbury, and one-third
to the endowment of the Collegiate School,
founded five years before, now Yale College.

Mining operations were continued here, from time
to time, until the Revolution, but probably without
bringing any satisfactory returns to anybody. The
ore was not rich, containing only from ten to twelve
per cent of metal, and the work of reducing it, in the
existing state of scientific knowledge, very difficult.
The same jealousy, before spoken of, lest there should
be any rivalry to the productions of the mother country,
which restrained the introduction of manufacturing
into the colonies, operated as a check to successful
mining, the business of smelting and refining being
prohibited by acts of Parliament. The proprietors,
therefore, were compelled to ship their ore to England
to be reduced, involving, of course, great expense and
risk. One cargo was wrecked in the English Channel,
another captured by the French.

The copper produced from these mines was said to
be of a superior quality. Some of it was coined in the
shape of money, called, from the name of the maker,
Higley's coppers, which passed current in the vicinity.
They bore on one side the inscription, I am
good copper, and on the other, Value me as you
please. They are said to have passed for two shillings
and sixpence, currency, – about forty-two cents,
– which must have exceeded their real value. These
were much sought after, and used in melting up with
gold for the making of pinchbeck and other base
metals, employed in the manufacture of jewelry.

At the time it began to be used as a prison, the
mine consisted of two shafts sunk perpendicularly
through the solid rock – one thirty-five, other seventy-five
feet in depth. From the bottoms of these, extensive caverns,
excavated for ore, descended several
hundred feet into the mountain, in a sloping direction,
according to the lay of the vein, terminating in levels
or drains, which had been pierced through to the surface,
further down the mountain, for the purpose of
freeing the mine from water.

In May, 1773, the first steps were taken by the legislature
of the colony for the establishment of a prison
at this place. A committee, appointed to visit and
examine it, reported that, in their judgment, by an
expenditure of about thirty-seven pounds, the caverns
could be so secured that it would be next to impossible
for any person to escape from them. Whereupon
the same committee were invested with full
power to agree with the proprietors of said mines, or
the lessees thereof, to receive, keep, and employ in
said mines such criminals as may by law be sentenced
to such punishment, or to purchase in the remaining
term of said lease for such purposes, and according to
their best discretion, effectually to secure said mines
suitably to employ such persons as may be there confined
by order of law.[1]
In October following, the
committee reported that they had purchased the remaining
term of the lease – nineteen years – for sixty
pounds; that, by blasting rocks, they had prepared a
well-finished lodging-room, about fifteen feet by
twelve, in the cavern, and had fixed over the west and
shorter shaft a large iron door, etc. The eastern
shaft was left open, its depth and bare perpendicular
walls of rock being judged sufficient to prevent escapes.
There were no buildings upon the premises,
nor any walls to prevent external access to the shafts.

Such was the place provided by the colony foremost
on this continent, if not in the world, for its regard
for Christianity, – the home of churches and schools,
– for the punishment of her criminals. Let it be imputed,
not to her inconsistency with her professions,
but to her ignorance of what the prison system of a
Christian state should and might be, that she established
one that might, almost without a figure, be
styled infernal. Thrust down into subterranean caverns,
dripping perpetually with water from above,
where no ray of sunlight could ever penetrate; compelled
to sleep on straw in damp and moldy bunks,
and left to contaminate each other by endless recitals
of past crimes and endless plottings of new, – it is no
wonder that its inmates, instead of being reformed,
emerged more hardened in all evil, to become the
scourge and terror of the community.

At that time nothing was known of our modern
prison discipline. Howard, Mrs. Fry, and other philanthropists
had not disclosed to the world the horrors
of European prisons, and roused the benevolent
to undertake some measures for their reform. The
sole considerations which seem to have influenced the
legislature of Connecticut one hundred years ago, in
constructing a prison, were the safe-keeping of the
prisoners, and the smallest expense to the colony.

The first convict received at the mine was sent
there in December, 1773. He escaped three weeks
afterward through the eastern shaft, being drawn up
by a rope, assisted, it is said, by a woman to whom
he was paying addresses. In February, 1774, three
prisoners were received, all of whom escaped in less
than two months; in April, another who had been
there but four days. It is to be remembered, that,
beside the open eastern shaft, there were other parts
of the caves which had not been properly secured.
The men, too, were at first employed in digging the
ore of the mine, and found their tools not only adapted
to that labor, but to open for themselves the way
of escape.

Notwithstanding the proved insecurity of this
prison, it had the reputation abroad of being superior
in strength to any other in the country. Two years
after its first occupancy, General Washington sent
thither a number of culprits for confinement. They
are, he says, such flagrant and atrocious villains, that
they cannot by any means be set at large, or confined
in any place in this camp. Congress too, in 1781,
applied to Governor Trumbull (the Brother Jonathan,
so called affectionately by Washington, from
whom the appellation has passed to the entire American
people) for the use of the mines as a prison for
the reception of British prisoners of war, and for the
purpose of retaliation. Happy was it for all the
parties concerned that the war itself came to a close
before the negotiations for this purpose were completed.

In 1774-5 the eastern shaft was closed, and a blockhouse
of logs built over the western one, which admitted
entrance to the caverns through a heavy iron
door. This, with the keeper's house adjacent, was
soon burned. New buildings were then ordered to be
erected, among them a work-shop above ground.
These were not completed till November, 1780, the
prisoners, meanwhile, being confined in Hartford Jail.
In 1781, the premises were first inclosed with a picket
fence, with bastions at the corners for security. But
this and the other buildings were again destroyed by
fire, and for a time the idea of successfully maintaining
a prison here seems to have been abandoned. At
last, taught by experience, the legislature passed a
new act, more perfect in its details, providing not only
for the repair of the old fixtures, but the building of
suitable work-shops, a keeper's house, etc., all to be
enclosed within a strong stone wall. The work was
completed at an expense to the state of over three
thousand dollars. The prison was now found to be
secure, and was thenceforth maintained until the
completion of the new State Prison in Wethersfield in
1827.

The work of mining was subsequently renewed by
parties who had purchased the premises from the
state, the old work-shops being used as founderies for
smelting the ore. It is now, however, abandoned,
though the old wall, the guard-house, and many of
the other buildings remain. The whole is worth a
visit by those who would get a full idea of the changes
which have been effected in the half century past in
the prison discipline of New England.

It was not until November that the work of repairing
and refitting at the prison was completed, so as to
be ready for the reception of the convicts. Meanwhile,
pursuant to their sentence, they were detained
at the jail in Hartford.

Newgate was now in a much better condition than
ever before. It was kept under a strong military
guard, consisting of a lieutenant, a sergeant, a corporal,
and twenty-four privates. The whole number
of prisoners was about twenty, of whom the
greater part were tories. A law had been passed, the
spring before, authorizing the superior court to sentence
to Newgate persons convicted of acts of disloyalty
to the state. Courts-martial were clothed with
similar power in cases occurring under military jurisdiction.
These persons were of a higher class than
ordinary criminals. being frequently men of education
and property. One of them was a clergyman named
Baxter, who preached a sermon to his fellow convicts
from Judges 15:2, entitled, Tyrannicide proved
Lawful, from the practice of Jews, Heathens, and
Christians. A Discourse delivered in the Mines at
Symsbury, in the Colony of Connecticut, to the Loyalists
confined there by order of the Congress, on September
19, 1781, by Simeon Baxter, a Licentiate in
Divnity and voluntary Chaplain to those Prisoners in
the Apartment called Orcus. It was dedicated to
Washington and Congress and the Protestant rebel
ministers in the thirteen Confederated Colonies in
America, and printed both in this country and England.
The doctrine it advocated was the rightfulness
and duty of killing all usurping and rebel magistrates.
It is garnished with Latin and numerous quotations
from Greek and Roman authors, and displays considerable
learning and literary ability.

The confinement of such persons as these with common
burglars, horse thieves, counterfeiters, and other
felons, shows how intense were the feelings of indignation
existing in the minds of the patriots against
those who were regarded as enemies to their country's
liberties.

Previous to this time the prisoners had been kept
as labor in digging ore in the mines. A work-shop
having now been built above ground, they were henceforth
employed in mechanical labor, chiefly in making
nails. The machinery by which nails are now
produced had not then been invented; hence all that
were used, of every size, had to be made by hand, in
consequence of which they were scarce and expensive.